Saturday, August 31, 2013

Confidence is a preference for the Labour Party Leader
Of what is known as
(Cunlife)
Electoral defeat can be avoided
If you take a route straight through what is known as
(Cunlife)

John's got defensive he gets intimidated
By the pesky journos, they love a bit of him
(Cunlife)
Who's that trader fooling?
You should cut down on your Cunlife mate, go to Hawaii

All the people
So many people
They all go hand in hand
Hand in hand to choose Cunlife
Know what I mean?

I get up when I want except on Tuesdays
When I get rudely awakened by the Chief Whip
(Skippy)
I put my lei on, have a cup of kava
And I think about leading the House
(Cunlife)

I feed the unions I sometimes feed the activists too
It gives me a sense of enormous well-being
(Cunlife)
And then I'm happy for the rest of the day safe in the knowledge
There will always be a bit of my id devoted to it

All the people
So many people
And they all go hand in hand
Hand in hand to choose Cunlife

Cunlife
(Cunlife)
Cunlife
(Cunlife)

It's got nothing to do with
Autobahn technique you know
(Cunlife)
And it's not about you sloggers
Who go round and round and round
(Cunlife)

All the people
So many people
And they all go hand in hand
Hand in hand to choose Cunlife

All the people
So many people
And they all go hand in hand
Hand in hand to choose Cunlife

Nothing unusual there, of course. It's just that this time it's no villain they're tickling, it's a bone fide honest citizen's death and the hole left in their family. There's no Garth McVicar pantomime to plead their case in the media. These victims are too brown for that clown, eh.

If I read between the lines of that Police PR shill correctly, it's not a stretch to presume that the AOS button man shot what was believed to be the right man, due to either garbled communications, loud wops from the Eagle chopper fogging the Comms, or institutionalised racial assumptions. In Copthink, what were the odds that the white guy was bad and the brown guy was good?

Anyways, back to the cheap blue line. Aside from the thousand apologies still owed by the cops to the Naitokos, the NZ Police still owe the Naitoko family another three million, two
hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars in blood money.

Thursday, August 22, 2013

Ed Milliband had better look out. Labour Parties in the bigger Commonwealth nations have a case of the jitters. Rudd stabbed Gillard in Canberra with a boomerang (a useless stabbing tool, but when life hands you lemons, etc.). David Shearer has just planked himself in Wellington before his useless crew mutinied. If UK Labour can't stop the bleed to UKIP and other protest votes, Ed Millibot's political career might as well jump in a peat bog as well.

It's a sure bet that David Cunliffe will become the third NZ Labour party leader in as many years. Putting aside that iPredict has him out in front by a Pinocchio's nose, there's the party membership and union bloc vote that almost guarantees Cunliffe's coronation. Pity the poor bloody caucus that has to live with it.

It's nothing personal against Cunliffe. My old man was well hated within his Labour party caucus too. Usually, this displeasure is rewarded with placements on the fringes, not the leadership. If Shearer felt undermined by his peers, Cunliffe as leader had best tread lightly.

Frankly, the leadership is not Labour's biggest problem. The party has become infected with Alliance party nomads, and the dead wood of caucus might be the only buffer keeping these nutters away from even worse damage. It seems the party has given up on electorates and destined for the minor party ploy of going only after the party vote.

No-one in Labour has any idea of grand strategy. What Labour really needs right now is some strategic nous, and Cunliffe is almost certain to deliver a large jump to the the Left, where none of the votes are at.

Saturday, August 03, 2013

Press Gallery muppets, formerly in thrall to the government spinners and shakers, have revolted over the Vance revelations. The scalp of the head of Parliamentary Services was offered on a platter, apparently for not telling National's Chief of Staff to go fuck himself before he would release Dunne's data. Fresh from voting for the second reading of the GCSB Bill, Peter Dunne is seeking legal advice over the privacy of ministerial communications.

In a forlorn effort to shut the whole thing down in an officialese version of the DDoS attack that took down several National party websites this week, the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet dumped a redacted email trail late Friday afternoon.

The dump is repetitive and narrow. For example, it doesn't list the correspondence between DPMC, National Chief of Staff Wayne Eagleson, and the Henry Enquiry, Parliamentary Services and Ministerial Services. Curiously enough though, the DPMC's disclosure signature appears scattered throughout the email trail.

I hope the Parliamentary Privileges Committee gets access to all phone logs, notes from F2F meetings and emails between all these actors, in their inquiry into the inquiry into the leak.

The dump itself reminds me of working for Telecom's *123 mobile helpdesk back in the day. There's elements of The Office at play in there, as well as the usual bureaucratic Chinese Whispers and Pavlov Expectorations. There's occasional flashes of geek curiosity and BOFH (Bastard Operator From Hell) elation:

Annie was surprised. This is the level of novelty that the Henry witch hunt entailed. This is uncharted constitutional territory, and DPMC is drawing the map as it sees fit.

I suppose it is too much to ask for Dunne to reconsider his vote for the third reading of the GCSB Bill. Anything for yet another rigged game in Ohariu, eh.